Photo By Staff Sgt. Gauret Stearns | Gary Anderson, former Nebraska Guardsman, donates his 1964 Olympic gold medal winning...... read more read more
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SEWARD, Neb. – Like an aged warrior, Gary Anderson’s famed rifle is showing its age; the rifle stock, barrel and accompanying sights still bear the scars and marks of countless competitive battles, including a very historic one in Tokyo more than 60 years ago.
Masking tape holds bent cardboard in place on the rear of the wooden stock. Similar tape clings to a silver front palm-rest where its “owner” steadied the rifle during its last competition with an athlete representing the U.S.S.R.
In its totality, the rifle is understated, both gangly and elegant in appearance. Yet, despite its looks, the rifle holds an honored place amongst American Olympic lore. And now it’s part of the growing collection of artifacts at the Nebraska National Guard Museum in Seward, Nebraska.
“This rifle served me well during the years that I used it,” former Nebraska Army National Guard Lieutenant Gary Anderson wrote recently about the Remington 300-meter free rifle he donated to the Nebraska Guard Museum on Dec. 27.
Did it ever. In 1962, Anderson used the rifle to lead the U.S.A. marksmanship team to two 300-meter World Championship Gold Medals. He also used it to win a gold medal in the 1963 Pan American Games in the 300-Meter (3x40) free rifle event with a score of 1,146, just one point shy of the world record at the time.
It was the same rifle that Anderson used to win a Gold Medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo on Oct. 15, 1964., the first of two consecutive Olympic Golds the Axtell, Nebraska, native earned in the 1960s while also serving as a Nebraska Army Guard engineering officer In Hastings and Grand Island.
“It was a pretty special feeling,” said Anderson, recalling the memory of the Gold Medal being placed around his neck while standing upon the Olympic podium as a live band played the National Anthem.
“For me, so many of my emotions were at a peak at that time… my dream of becoming an Olympic Gold Medalist had actually come true.”
Olympic Dreams
Gary Anderson said he first started dreaming about becoming an Olympic Gold Medalist while still a high school student in Axtell, a small town in central Nebraska. And Anderson didn’t know how he was going to do it.
“Where I lived, there were no shooting clubs and there was nobody that I could find who knew anything about target shooting,” said Anderson, who graduated from high school in 1957. “I found out that shooting was a sport in the Olympics, and my dream was to become a shooting champion, so I basically taught myself how to shoot.”
A couple years later, Anderson found himself in the U.S. Army, serving as a new infantryman. The dream of the Olympics persisted. “I finally realized that if you’re going to accomplish your goals, you’ve got to go big time. And that’s when I talked my way into the Army Marksmanship Unit,” Anderson said.
The U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit was established in 1956 with the mission of producing shooters who could win Olympic and World Championship medals. This was no small goal. At the time, the United States and its allies were engaged in a bitter competition with the Soviet Union and its allies. This Cold War confrontation played out daily in military, economic, political, information and sports arenas around the world.
According to a recent article written by Anderson, the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit was working with American arms makers to develop target rifles and pistols that were better than those being produced in Russia.
“USAMU leaders cooperated with both Remington and Winchester in a project to develop an American-made 300-meter free rifle that could be used to win international medals,” Anderson wrote.
By the time Anderson joined the USAMU, those rifles were already in use. He credits the unit’s former commander, the famed Col. Tom Sharpe who would go on to serve as the 1964 Olympic Shooting Team Captain, for giving the brash young Nebraska Soldier a chance to try out for the Army’s prestigious shooting team.
“I was an unknown kid from Nebraska, so Colonel Sharpe really deserves a lot of credit for giving me a chance. Much of the credit for my development goes to the USAMU,” Anderson said, adding he spent the next four years in the Army honing his marksmanship skills during endless hours on the Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) shooting ranges in Georgia.
That support continued when Anderson left the active Army in early 1962 and joined a Nebraska Army National Guard engineering unit in Hastings.
“USAMU brought me back on active duty every year when there was an international competition,” Anderson said. “So, my summer job when I was going to school was 90 days of active duty with the Army Marksmanship Unit. That was a good job for somebody going to college.”
In 1963, along with his studies and competitions, the Nebraska National Guard sent Anderson to attend Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore). He graduated first in his class and then received his commission as a second lieutenant while attending the Nebraska Guard’s annual training exercise at Camp Ripley, Minnesota.
Assigned as an engineering officer with a Nebraska Guard unit in Grand Island, Anderson said he continued occasional active duty assignments with the USAMU. He added Nebraska Army National Guard leaders were incredibly accommodating in letting the young platoon leader pursue his marksmanship goals.
“The Guard was very cooperative about my disappearing for 90 days every year. And they had to make some adaptations to the training,” Anderson said. “But the Guard gained something, too, from my successes. There weren’t any other Guardsmen that were qualifying for USA National Shooting Teams and or producing the international competition results that I was doing.”
“By then I had won World Championships and a Pan American gold medal, so they were getting some public relations out of it,” Anderson added.
Cold War Confrontation at the Olympics
In early 1964, Anderson earned a place on the U.S.A. Olympic Shooting Team after placing first at the national shooting trials. He believes he was the only National Guard Soldier or Airman to make the Olympic team that year.
“It was pretty rare for a National Guardsman to be on any international team,” Anderson said. “There were a couple of pistol shooters that made World Championship teams or the Pan American team… but not the Olympics.”
By that point, Anderson had been using the same rifle for several years. He was also constantly adjusting the rifle, which had not been designed with ergonomics in mind. Adjustments included placing masking tape on the front palm-rest while also securing a piece of bent cardboard at the rear of the rifle stock with masking tape to maintain a better head position for aiming at his targets.
He said despite the success he had with the rifle in the earlier competitions, it wasn’t perfect. Anderson and the USAMU gunsmiths worked with the rifle and its hand-loaded ammunition to get every point out of it they could. The 300-meter rifle target was small; the ten ring was only 10 centimeters in diameter, so the margin of error was tiny.
“I was not happy with how I felt the rifle was shooting,” Anderson said. “Nevertheless, in those years I don’t think the Russians, Swiss, or anyone else had anything better.”
He would soon find out.
Anderson said the Olympics are more than just a competition testing one’s athletic skills.
Gamesmanship to increase pressure on one’s opponents was – and still is – a significant part of the Olympics games.
1964 was no different.
“The gamesmanship was there, and you had better be ready to deal with it,” Anderson said.
That included a bus ride out to the ranges on Oct. 15, 1964, the day of the competition. As Anderson – who was already regarded as one of, if not the, best 300-meter shooters in the world – rode on the bus, he found himself surrounded by reporters eager for a quote.
“At that time the media could ride on the bus with the athletes. That’s no longer permitted, but a bunch of media guys got me in the back of the bus and wanted to know who I thought would win the match,” Anderson said. “I said, ‘Well, honestly, I should.’ That became quite a big sensation that this fresh young kid from Nebraska would say something like this, but you know, it was an honest reaction because I really was shooting better than anybody else in the world at that time.”
Anderson’s brashness would be tested almost immediately.
Choosing to shoot the first portion of the match from the kneeling position, Anderson scored a near-disastrous 92x100 on his first ten shots.
“I actually had a loose sight that contributed at least in part to this low score,” Anderson said. “So, I was way behind when we started.”
Realizing the problem, Anderson quickly fixed the sight before moving on to the next portions of the match. Suddenly, Anderson scores began to soar. Time and again the Nebraskan’s shots scored 10s.
At one point, Anderson said, a Russian judge entered Anderson’s shooting booth and stood just a few feet behind him, watching intently as he shot. Anderson said it felt like a deliberate attempt to intimidate him.
It didn’t work.
“For whatever reason if it made me concentrate more intensely, and I shot a string of tens while he was standing there,” Anderson said. “At some point I turned around and spoke to him – I don’t know if he understood English or not – but I said, “Please, please stay. You’re helping me shoot better.’” He went away as Anderson continued to shoot what became a world record score.
By the time the match was over, Anderson and his rifle had made history. Anderson had not only won the Olympic Gold Medal, he had also broken the World Record by six points and the Olympic Record by 24 points.
Anderson said the lesson he learned that day is one that he continues to communicate to shooters to this day. “Anytime something goes wrong, don’t give up. Just push harder. Work even harder to try and make up for you just did,” Anderson. “Of course, that’s what I was able to do following that first position, which allowed me to pick up a big lead over the second-place shooter.”
Anderson was awarded his Gold Medal during a ceremony held the next day. He was further honored a few days later, on Oct. 23, 1964, when Hastings National Guard Soldiers took the lead in organizing “Gary Anderson Day in Hastings.” Along with a parade, speeches and a proclamation given to him by Mayor of Hastings, Anderson signed autographs for hundreds of kids.
“I was a hero to a whole bunch of school kids who got the day off from school,” Anderson said, laughing again. “The whole experience was just a total, total great highlight. There were people who knew me who came from all over the state. And all these school bands were part of the parade.”
New Life for a Treasured Olympic Artifact
Soon, the bands and speeches faded and Anderson shifted his sights toward the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, where he would successfully defend his Olympic Gold Medal. By that time, however, Anderson had transferred to the California Army National Guard and the rifle he had used in Tokyo had been exchanged for a different one he helped design.
The original rifle – the one that had made history in Tokyo – found itself gathering dust in a USAMU armory in Georgia. “That rifle belonged to the Army, not to me personally,” Anderson said. “So, I had to turn the rifle in.”
Anderson was able to keep the rifle’s sights, trigger and some accessories. The original rifle’s barrel and action were subsequently dissembled. He doesn’t know where they ultimately ended up.
“The stock apparently was sitting in the shop for several years gathering dust,” Anderson said. “Well, the stock was not considered a considerable piece of government property, so they offered it back to me, along with the butt-plate and palm rest.”
Anderson said the stock remained in his garage, nearly forgotten amongst dozens of memorabilia detailing his work as an Olympic athlete and later as one of nation’s premier marksmanship leaders.
Forgotten, that is, until Anderson received an invitation several years ago to attend the grand opening of a new, state-of-the-art weapons room at the Nebraska Army National Guard Museum in Seward, Nebraska.
Among the artifacts that went on public display that day were two replicas of the Olympic Gold Medals Anderson won in the 1960s.
“I was impressed by the museum,” he said. “I think that for that type of museum, it’s extremely well done.”
And that’s when an idea struck. Following the ceremony, Anderson mentioned to retired Col. Jerry Meyer, the Nebraska National Guard state historian, that he had his rifle stock from the 1964 Olympics in his garage. Would the museum be interested in it if he was able to restore that rifle to its original condition? “Of course he jumped on it,” Anderson said.
Anderson said restoring the rifle back to its 1964 self took a little work and ingenuity. He soon found a period-correct Remington M40-X action. That was soon followed by a barrel that was dimensionally correct.
He then contacted a local gunsmith to put the rifle back together correctly. “Short Action Customs of Wellington, Ohio, took on that task and did a great job,” Anderson said. “The finished rifle is not exactly pretty. It still has the masking tape and cardboard that was on the rifle when I shot it in the Olympics.”
“We decided that it may be ugly, but it’s authentic,” he added.
Anderson said that when he received the rebuilt rifle, memories started flooding back.
“That Tokyo experience was a life-changing experience,” he said. “The struggle of going through that competition with all its highs and lows… it brought back a flood of memories of that day. It was an extraordinary experience.”
Anderson formally presented the rifle to the Nebraska National Guard Museum on Dec. 27, 2024, during a small ceremony at the museum.
Meyer said the rifle will have a special, treasured spot within the museum.
“To have something this impressive within our collection is an absolute honor,” Meyer said. “I don’t know of another National Guard Museum that has an artifact like this. It helps fulfill the intent of the arms room of honoring all of those Nebraska National Guard Soldiers and Airmen who competed and contributed to marksmanship over the years.”
“So, it is going to have an honored place in our exhibit,” he added.
Anderson said being able to have the re-built rifle live on in a place where it will be seen every day by people, possibly even by an impressionable young person, is extremely meaningful.
“That’s really the whole idea,” he said. “Going through this process of getting the rifle restored so that more people could remember the role that it played… if this rifle inspires somebody to think that they can do something similar, well that’s what this is all about.”
| Date Taken: | 12.27.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 01.03.2025 11:23 |
| Story ID: | 488658 |
| Location: | SEWARD, NEBRASKA, US |
| Web Views: | 117 |
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